The Exotic Beer Weekly - This week Lucky Beer

Good Beer, and Good Luck. 

The journey to true enlightenment begins with a single beer. Not just any beer, mind you. A humble monk cannot sip just any old brew and call himself enlightened. Nay, indeed he must partake of the Beer With the Buddha. Only then will he achieve higher consciousness and be able to answer the age old riddles that have plagued mankind forever: if a man drinks a beer in a forest, and there is nobody else around to party with, will he still have a great time? 

 

I am of course referring to Lucky Beer. You probably know it; you’ve no doubt seen it in the store, looked at it, picked it up, chuckled and thought “oh, that’s quite cool”, and instantly put it back down to find more well-trodden pastures. It’s the one with the image of the Buddha in the glass. While most would see this as novelty enough, if one cared to sneak a peek underneath the bottle, one might perceive 4 Chinese symbols (presumably carrying on the theme, standing for luck, prosperity, peace and love or some such). Obviously much effort has been put into producing a gimmicky bottle; hopefully the same work ethic has produced a drop to match. 

 

Luckily enough, the beer is quite good, though not by any means great. Like most things the Buddhists do, it’s incredibly subtle and requires lots of meditation to uncover its secrets. A mix of malt, rice, hops and water, all I could really taste was the water, which apparently comes from the Thousand Island Lake in China (which, the marketing execs assure us, is drinkable.) its heavily carbonated, but still very smooth and light, so the fledgling beer-drinker can drink it no problem.

My only issue is the lack of flavour; all I could taste was carbonated water. Sure, there’s a bit of beer flavour to it, id just prefer it to be stronger. Nevertheless, its still quite refreshing, a perfect accompaniment to Chinese food or when meditating in your Zen garden. 

 

When you get to the halfway point, you won’t be wondering whether its half empty or half full, but where the next bottle is coming from. And at only $12.99 a 6-pack, you wont have to follow Monkey’s Journey to the West just to find one. 

 

I award Lucky Beer 3 horseshoes out of 5.